D Drive won't work

[Michael Hobby]

Whenever I put a disc in my D drive the activity light illuminates for a few
seconds then goes out and the drive does not appear to read the disc.

If I then click on a program that requires a disc in the D drive I get a
message telling me to put in the disc or that there is no disc in the drive.

Can anyone help please?

 

[Jim]

Whenever I put a disc in my D drive the activity light illuminates for a
few seconds then goes out and the drive does not appear to read the disc.

If I then click on a program that requires a disc in the D drive I get a
message telling me to put in the disc or that there is no disc in the
drive.

Can anyone help please?

It would be better to tell us that your CD/DVD burner is having trouble.
You see, my D drive is a hard drive..

Anyway, this message usually means that your CD/DVD drive is having hardware
problems (it cannot tell whether it has a disk in it or not). Sometimes,
one of the CD cleaning disks will help. Most of the time, you just bite the
bullet and replace the drive.
Jim

 

[Michael Hobby]

It would be better to tell us that your CD/DVD burner is having trouble.
You see, my D drive is a hard drive..

Anyway, this message usually means that your CD/DVD drive is having
hardware problems (it cannot tell whether it has a disk in it or not).
Sometimes, one of the CD cleaning disks will help. Most of the time, you
just bite the bullet and replace the drive.
Jim

Yes it is the CD/DVD. Surprised that it should need replacing. The computer
is only 12 months old.

 

[Jim]

Yes it is the CD/DVD. Surprised that it should need replacing. The
computer is only 12 months old.

I had one break within the 1 year warranty. Actually, it is not uncommon
for hardware to fail rather early in life.
Jim

 

[Ron Martell]

Yes it is the CD/DVD. Surprised that it should need replacing. The computer
is only 12 months old.

It does happen. If the computer is only 12 months old then it may
still have a warranty in effect so you should check into this and
quickly as a one year warranty may be nearly expired if it hasn't
already.

Do you have a bootable CD, such as the Windows XP installation CD that
came with your computer?

If so try inserting that disk into the drive, shutting down and
restarting. Go into the BIOS setup first, and make sure the Boot drive
priority is set for the CD first.

If the computer actually tries to boot from the CD (cancel it before
it starts doing any actual installing of anything) then the drive
itself is working okay and the problem is something in Windows.

But if it will not detect a bootable CD at startup then it is a
problem with the drive itself and replacement is probably indicated.
Note that with the low price of CDRW drives today (I sell them for $39
CDN) it is not worth even attempting to repair the drive other than by
cleaning it with a CD cleaner disk.

If it will detect and start to boot from a bootable CD then the
problem is with Windows and there are some steps you can take to fix
this.

Open Control Panel - System - Hardware - Device Manager.
Expand the DVD/CD-ROM drives category by clicking on the + sign.
Right-click on the entry for your drive and select Uninstall.
If there is more than one entry in this category do it for all of
them.
Reboot your computer and it should redetect the drive and load the
proper configuration settings.

Good luck


Good luck



Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."